A month ago, Donald Trump was still president, and he seemed determined to remain both in the White House and lodged in Americans’ psyches. What a difference a failed coup can make. These days, exiled from social media and awaiting a second impeachment trial, Trump is awfully quiet. But recently there have been a number of reported Trump sightings. Suddenly, his SAG-AFTRA resignation letter — complete with his distinctive jabs and overestimation of his contributions to Home Alone 2 — surfaces online. A statement appears praising Lou Dobbs after the pro-Trump Fox Business host’s show was canceled. There the former president is, on a random Floridian’s TikTok, handing out $50 bills to people at Mar-a-Lago. A well-placed source reportedly says Trump is doing fine, actually, just taking some time to plot his revenge on all the Republicans who have wronged him.
Supposedly, Trump’s silence is attributable to his impeachment trial, which starts next week. While Trump will almost certainly be acquitted, as most Republican senators don’t even want to have a trial, he and his staff have reportedly been advised to lay low ahead of it. According to Politico, Trump allies worry that his trial could be bad for his already-damaged reputation, and thus they “are imploring his impeachment team to avoid one specific topic when they defend the ex-president at his Senate trial next week: the deadly riot that unfolded at the U.S. Capitol.” So in other words, try not to draw attention to the reason why they’re all there.
Indeed, the time is not yet ripe for the former president to make the kind of public return he has in mind, which, based on intel coming out of Trumpworld, may involve hitting the road for a “campaign revenge tour” against Republican defectors.
A source identified as “one of the Republicans who remains tight with Trump” told Business Insider that they speculate the former president “wants to get out a roulette wheel with all their faces on it,” referring to GOP lawmakers who voted in support of Trump’s removal from office. According to Trump insiders, his vindictive road trip is expected to target the ten House Republicans who voted for his impeachment last month; he has also been keeping a watchful eye on any GOP senators who break with him. In the meantime, Trump appears to be keeping busy at Mar-a-Lago:
And despite being banned from Twitter, Trump is apparently feeling fruitful as ever. “He has written out insults and observations,” according to the Daily Beast, but without his social-media megaphone, has developed a new habit of “suggesting putdowns for others to use or post to their own Twitter.” In other words, he’s moonlighting as a mean ghostwriter.
Aside from providing a new creative outlet, Twitter’s lifetime ban may actually aid Trump’s path forward, the Republican close to the former president told Business Insider. “Honestly, Twitter did him a favor,” they said, noting “even [Trump] recognizes that we have Trump fatigue” and “knows that you can get overexposed,” — guiding principles that definitely sound like those of a man who sought to consume the national spotlight for five-plus years.
